


Hold Not Yourself Tharn

by Marli_Toled0 (orphan_account)



Category: Watership Down - Richard Adams
Genre: Depression, Folklore, Gen, Lapine Folklore, Lapine language, Obsessive thoughts, Regret, Relational Healing, Restoration, motivation, weariness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-06
Updated: 2020-09-06
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:41:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26314360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/Marli_Toled0
Summary: This tale takes place at a time when El-ahrairah, the Prince of A Thousand Enemies, is hlessi (without a home) and searching for his eldest children who’ve left him. Bereft of the love he’d had and weary in search of these lost relationships, he finds himself ensnared by a dreadful feeling while looking at an injured tree.
Relationships: El-ahrairah & His People, El-ahrairah & Lord Frith, El-ahrairah & The Black Rabbit of Inle
Comments: 2
Kudos: 4





	Hold Not Yourself Tharn

**Author's Note:**

> Watership Down has been a great love of mine and I am once again grateful to it. It has been a comfortable, familiar place to burrow into again.
> 
> I use a smidge of the Lapine language in this one. Here’s a bit of a glossary, if that’s helpful:
> 
> Hlessi— without a home  
> Tharn— frozen in fear  
> Zorn— destroyed or marred greatly

The birch bore an injury some length up its build; sap unfurled down the tree-flesh like a streamer. This sienna stain bespoke a great misfortune and El-ahrairah was powerless to avoid such a place. 

Rickets in his hip bones and ankles announced his approach to the injured tree. This all took place at a time when the Prince Rabbit was  _ hlessi _ , seeking to discover where across the terribly wide world his eldest children had wandered. He’d lost them. 

At the sign of red on the birch, he hopped under its light-dappled cover, and stilled— mind adrift, somehow, between alert and  _ tharn _ . There, he rest-watched, as the day spun quietly into the late afternoon. Presently, El-ahrairah heard the  _ tick-tick _ footfalls of a long-legged spider upon the sowthistle leaves. Spotting the spider, El-ahrairah called: “Granddaddy, what is this place? Is it your home?” 

Granddaddy Long-Legs tugged his whiskers in the respectful manner of spiders. He told the Prince Rabbit, “Not mine. Not anyone’s. Mites maybe. Why, sir?” El-ahrairah had forgotten the speech of spiders; it had been long since he’d deigned to speak with one. Always the spider-people spoke thus, little phrases, for they are little folk, and always with evenly-numbered syllables.

“Granddaddy…” El-ahrairah dismissed the question and asked his own, “Have any of my people run along this way?”

To this, Granddaddy Long-Legs answered, “Always,” and glanced askance, as though he wanted to be on his way.

El-ahrairah, however, was in no mindset to be a good conversationalist with a spider. “Tell me what this place is called.”

“Not called.” The spider bowed twice in confusion. “A place, only.”

El-ahrairah frowned deeply. A place only? What did Granddaddy Long-Legs mean? There was much here— he felt it. It disturbed him. Yet, only he responded to the quivering beneath the daylight, the cooing of the woods, the life ever-moving onward.

“Good day.” Granddaddy Long-Legs said, tugging his fine beard again. He truly wanted to go his way and El-ahrairah had been silent a long while. Tentatively, he orchestrated his many feet so he could walk down the sowthistle.

Watching him leave, moodily, El-ahrairah refused a proper goodbye. Time elapsed while the Prince Rabbit stared at the dark sap leaking, leaking down its hide. He nibbled the spider’s sowthistle platform until every sweet yellow blossom was consumed. Still, sated in body, he remained perturbed in spirit.

Lord Frith, returning home, lingered by El-ahrairah. “Why are you here, Prince of Rabbits? How has this birch so won your contemplation?”

By this time, El-ahrairah was really quite grouchy. He didn’t look at the sun-God but slung a retort his way. “I may ask you much the same of me. Why stop on your way just to riddle at me? You know my thoughts better than I do.”

Lord Frith laughed, casting ripples along his orange and pink and violet train. “And why should I know your thoughts? You and your children have ever been a mess of knots to me.” His chuckles rolled into the clouds and they lit up, swiftly. “Each time I trace a finger across a line, I lose it under the knuckles of hundreds more.”

Ah, how often El-ahrairah had felt the same of himself. His mind could resemble a warren of too many runs. He lost his tracks and could not smell the familiar air, could not read the guiding scratches back, back to the light. Here he was now, trying to read signs that were and weren’t there— stalled in a dark run he didn’t know— directions devoid of any magnetic pull.

“I am able to solve one mystery for you, perhaps.” Lord Frith said as he retreated toward the horizon. “During a storm two nights before, while I was away, a larger limb without good blood, higher above, fell and struck and rent a young branch. That’s all. Don’t you see the two laying at hand?”

El-ahrairah looked and, indeed, there was a  _ zorn _ branch of wicked form, and beneath, a soft-fleshed branch of a couple seasons’ cycles. Lord Frith winked his last light at the Prince Rabbit and returned to his home. El-ahrairah sat with his answer, in the cool dark and felt no closer to knowing what had possessed his mind so.

_Who are you, trickster?_ He barked at himself. _Who is tricking you?_ _Who has stopped your legs running before your time to run has stopped?_ But he could not move.

By and by, El-ahrairah sensed  _ urges to whisper _ and he knew that the Black Rabbit of Inlè was with him. The Black Rabbit gave no salutation, but spoke kindly, as always. “Move on, Prince Rabbit. This is not your hurt.”

“There is something here,” El-ahrairah argued.

“There is.” Came the reply, soft as ash. The contrast to Frith’s electric laugh was as sensual as the voice itself. “But, it does not belong to you.”

“It does not belong to anyone!” El-ahrairah cried. All day no notice was offered to the tree’s injury except by him. The birch just stood weeping crimson and the day turned over it without looking down. The creatures of the grass passed below without looking up. Meanwhile he sat rapt and awed at such visual suffering.

The Black Rabbit said, “It is mine,” and El-ahrairah believed himself ensnared. But then, the Rabbit added, “And, your children are yours. Are you not still looking for them?”

Shame pricked his eyes. He was glad for the shawl of night— though, as he thought, he realized that if any creature’s gaze pierced the blackness it was the One who stood with him now. “It is difficult.” He confessed.

“As you knew it would be.”

The woodborer-people complained from hidden spaces between the larger things. El-ahrairah listened, thinking about their number; his people were once like them: numerous to the point of invading. Then Lord Frith had tricked El-ahrairah and decreed that his people could not rule the earth. Now, silver muzzled, of stiff joints, he scorned the idea that he was thought a ruler. He was ruler of nothing. Not of himself!— let alone the very world.

He could not even find his children within it.

The Black Rabbit was closer now. El-ahrairah’s own back was brushed by the fur that could conceal starlight. He was surprised to find it warm. “Come, listener-runner!” His voice seemed almost like a smile. “No longer hold yourself  _ tharn _ . You’ve enough enemies without having yourself as one.”

At this, El-ahrairah was seized by fear… yet, he found his joints loosened as if shackles had been released. He peered into the darkness, looking for the Black Rabbit. “I,” he said, and it was as though sharp stones rolled in his throat, “am lonely.”

So simple a truth; so difficult to bear.

“So lonely!” He repeated.

“You’ve been  _ hlessi _ long.” The Black Rabbit empathized. It amazed him; but, perhaps Inlè was ultimately in tune with what’s broken and ended. El-ahrairah felt broken and ended. As if knowing his heart, The Black Rabbit said, “You tire of your hurt, yet this is no place for you to stay. I will put these boughs to bed in the ground and so enrich the soil and feed the New Ones. You may not make this yours; you are powerless to alter what’s done here. And, you have your own seeds to grow.”

El-ahrairah wilted. He would have cried but his entire being  _ was _ a Sob, embodied. Try and try, he could not guide it through him. He remained gripped by the sorrow and regret. His time of pausing here, of recognizing his own pain externalized was over. The call to turn his eyes back on the path came for him; he was unready. “I… am weak. I am tired. And  _ they _ left  _ me _ .”

Again, there was kindness in the command The Black Rabbit gave him. “Not far from where you are, you’ll find the ones that left you. You may rest, Prince, but don’t _get_ _caught_. When you find your legs will listen to you, go to your loved ones, to their burrows. Tell them how far you felt, how far you’ve come. They will let you in.” 

With those blessings, The Black Rabbit of Inlè left El-ahrairah, fear and sadness pulsing in him, yet able to move.

**Author's Note:**

> Granddaddy Long-Legs is my own little darling. <3 Along with the spider-people customs. :) I sincerely hope you enjoyed the read. Thank you!


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